Replication File for "In-House vs. Outsourced Trolls: How Digital Mercenaries Shape State Influence Strategies"


** Citation **

DiResta, Renee, Shelby Grossman, and Alexandra Siegel. 2021. "In-House vs. Outsourced Trolls: How Digital Mercenaries Shape State Influence Strategies.” Political Communication.


** Notes **

The authors were only able to provide data aggregated to the month level, with the exception of URL shares, due to the terms of use for each dataset analyzed. Please reach out to the authors at shelbygrossman@stanford.edu with any additional questions about the raw data.

Set the working directory to the folder where ReadMe.txt is located.

Analysis run using R version 4.0.2  

** Data Subfolders and Datasets **

 (in the "data" directory)
 
1. narrative_data.csv

-- This dataset contains aggregated data showing the proportion of monthly tweets or posts that reference each of the 9 narratives we examine across platforms. 

2. sentiment_data.csv

--  This dataset contains aggregated data showing the proportion of monthly tweets or posts that express positive, negative, or neutral sentiment toward refugees, Clinton/Obama, or Trump across platforms. 

3. clickbait_data.csv
--  This dataset contains aggregated data showing the proportion of monthly tweets or posts that contain clickbait indicators across platforms. 

4. repost_data.csv
-- This dataset contains repost data for each URL from the Inside Syria Media Center reposted to other domains at least 15 times. 

** R files **

 (in the "code" directory)
If R files are run, they will generate the figures in the paper and online appendix and save them into the "plots" directory. 

1. narrative_analysis.R
-- Creates narrative over time plots.
-- Output: Figure 2

2. sentiment_analysis.R
-- Creates sentiment over time plots.
-- Output: Figures 3,4, & A2


3. clickbait_analysis.R
-- Creates clickbait over time and aggregate bar plots.
-- Output: Figures 5 & A3 

4. repost_analysis.R
-- Summarizes sharing data for Inside Syria Media Center articles that were re-posted to other domains at least 15 times. 
-- Output: Tables 1 & A3


